Freya
Max finished his final explanation regarding the Rivira outpost, leaning back with the quiet satisfaction of a deal struck in iron. Freya watched him, a slow, indulgent smile playing on her lips. She could have listened to him plot for hours; there was a particular pleasure in watching his mind work, in seeing the architecture of his ambition take shape.
But their discussion, however productive, had reached its natural end. She had waited long enough to see the reality of his growth.
"You have been very busy, my ambitious Devil," Freya whispered as she glided to the mattress and sat, looking back at him over her shoulder, her eyes bright with anticipation.
"Now..." she murmured, her gaze dropping deliberately to his shirt. "I believe it is time we see exactly how much you have grown."
Max didn't move. He remained in his chair, staring at the wall, his mind visibly elsewhere.
Freya watched him for a heartbeat, her smile twitching with genuine amusement. Lost in thought again, she mused. Always building something in that relentless little mind.
"Maximus," she prompted, her voice a low, melodic command.
Blinking away his reverie, Max offered a sheepish grin and rose from the chair. He crossed to the bed, unfastened his shirt with quick, practiced motions, and turned his back to her as he laid.
Freya let herself look for a moment, quiet and intent. Then she slipped a silver needle from her sleeve, pricked her fingertip, and drew forth a single bead of pulsing ichor.
She let it fall.
The moment it touched the skin between his shoulder blades, the Falna unlocked like a sealed vault.
Instead of merely blooming, the golden light of his accumulated growth flooded the chamber and swallowed the room whole. As Freya's divine perception sank into the matrix of his status, the chamber fell away, replaced by the living structure of his experiences. Woven through the light were three distinct focal points—knots of Excelia burning far brighter than the rest.
Freya reached for the first, smallest knot and let it pull her in.
Curiously, the memory was not in the Dungeon at all.
It was here, in Folkvangr and there was no visual attached to it, only sensation: a sudden, massive drain in his magical reserves, an exertion of unusual conceptual weight, and then a slow return to equilibrium. The amount of mana moved in that single instant, from the safety of his own suite, was staggering.
What was he doing?
It hadn't been combat. It lacked the violence of a fight or the strain of defense. If anything, it felt deliberate—the careful, invisible labor of someone fixing an idea into reality. Not improvisation. Construction. She could not identify the mechanism, only the shape of the act and the unnatural precision behind it. Another experiment, she decided at last, though the conclusion satisfied her very little. The mystery remained irritatingly intact.
She set it aside and reached for the second, much larger knot.
This scene opened in the dense wooden corridors of Floor 22. Max was in motion when a violent flash of crimson distorted the world, and suddenly he stood in the cavernous ash-grey expanse of Floor 17, staring up at the Wall of Grief just as the stone began to crack.
Freya watched as the Goliath dragged itself from the bedrock. Through Max's own senses she felt the oppressive weight of its birth settle over the room—the heaviness of it, the ancient hostility, the simple physical fact that something this large and violent had just forced its way into the world. She watched the battle unfold and found herself conceding, with quiet satisfaction, that Hogni's midnight report had not been exaggerated in the slightest.
It was not a struggle.
It was a dissection.
That truth did not arrive all at once. It assembled itself piece by piece as she watched him work. First the barriers—different in form, different in purpose, each deployed with the kind of instant precision that only looked effortless because he never hesitated.
Then the spells Hogni had mentioned, not repetitions of a single favored tactic but a sequence of completely different magical expressions, layered one after another according to need. Control. Containment. Redirection. Pressure. She watched the five-pole prison lock the Monster Rex in place, watched him test its regeneration with the cold curiosity of someone examining a specimen rather than fighting for his life, and finally watched that familiar black-red annihilation tear through the giant and end the experiment with his trademark Destruction magic.
Only then did the full meaning of the high numbers settle into place.
She was possibly the first deity to witness the EX stats and had known they were abnormal to the point of absurdity. But numbers on a Status sheet, however monstrous, were still numbers until they were translated into movement, force, and ease. Watching the fight with the Goliath through Max's own senses finally gave them shape.
All parameters in EX.
That was the part that mattered.
Not one inflated specialty carrying the rest. Not a single impossible stat compensating for ordinary foundations elsewhere. Every parameter had been raised to that level. Strength enough to strike far beyond what his level should permit. Endurance enough to treat prolonged strain like an inconvenience instead of a limit. Dexterity enough to keep every spell change and every physical adjustment perfectly efficient. Agility enough to move around force that should have pinned him down. And Magic—already outrageous before—dense enough to let him cycle through barriers, restraints, and offensive techniques in the middle of a Monster Rex fight without ever feeling mind down.
Freya felt the implication settle over her in a slow, pleasurable wave.
Around three thousand in everything. A baseline at least three times greater than a normal adventurer's before the level up was even accounted for. And then the level itself had stacked on top of that, amplifying not ordinary foundations but something already built far beyond the limits the Falna was meant to permit.
That was the difference.
In practical terms, what she was watching was not a newly advanced adventurer performing above expectations. It was the accumulated base of a normal Level 4 combatant condensed into a smaller frame and sharpened by instinct, talent, and that impossible lineage of his. No wonder the Goliath had looked manageable. To Max, it likely had been.
Her lips curved slowly.
So this is what those numbers truly meant.
No wonder Hogni had described it so flatly. There had been no uncertainty in it worth dramatizing.
The Falna blurred again, fast-forwarding through the chaos of the Middle Floors, carrying her back to Floor 22 and then downward with the trio as they forced a path toward Floor 25.
This time Freya's composure broke into open amusement.
She watched Max layer his slime familiar in magic and then, with cheerful confidence, hurl it off a waterfall to bypass two floors of the Dungeon.
A soft laugh escaped her.
The sheer audacity of it. It was every bit as absurd as his proposal to establish a base in Rivira, and perhaps even more revealing. Even here, in the middle of a deep dive, he had looked at a hazard that would force any sane party into caution and delay and had instead treated it as a logistical inconvenience to be solved with invention. He did not merely adapt to the Dungeon. He kept trying to reorganize it.
That, more than the recklessness, delighted her.
The memory shifted to the basin of Floor 27, and the reason for the knot became immediately clear.
Lightning devoured the lake.
Freya watched the strobing devastation in silence as Max and Hogni turned the Water Capital into a boiling execution ground, systematically eradicating the aquatic horde with breathtaking efficiency. Hundreds of monsters died in minutes. The Excelia compressed there was immense, but what held her attention just as much was the instinct behind it. He had looked at a hostile environment, understood its natural properties at a glance, and turned the entire battlefield into a weapon.
Crude in conception, perhaps. Brutally elegant in practice.
Then came the final residue of the memory—smaller, but still distinct.
Floor 24. The ascent. Killing a Green Dragon.
She watched Max and Hogni deliver the finishing blows in perfect synchronicity before leaving the remains to the slime, and something about the shape of it drew a warmer smile from her. There was strategy in it, certainly, but not only strategy. Training. Encouragement. Reward. Somewhere in the depths, the three of them had settled into a rhythm all their own—violent, efficient, and strangely affectionate beneath the blood and ash.
Endearing, she thought, and found that she meant it more than she expected.
With the visual memories exhausted, Freya withdrew her perception, letting the Falna's light shift from narrative to arithmetic. She moved to the raw numbers with the calm precision of a goddess ready to catalog her favored's growth, her mind already forming a mental baseline.
Based on his previous update and the sheer density of the Excelia she had just witnessed, she had braced herself to see the three-thousand mark across the board. It was a number that would have already been a historic impossibility, a total saturation of the mortal frame. She was prepared for it. She was ready to accept that "impossibility" as his new standard.
But as she reached the actual Status and the divine script sharpened into focus, her mental anchors were torn away.
What she saw stunned her once again, shattering even her revised expectations.
—
Status:
Maximus Stilbon
Freya Familia
Devil (Low Class)
Level: 2*
[*Notice: Level Up available.]
Stats:
Strength: I0 - EX3543
Endurance: I0 - EX3856
Dexterity: I0 - EX3342
Agility: I0 - EX3476
Magic: I0 - EX4683
Lineage Powers:
Devil
Destruction
?
Magic:
Ars Magna
Independent Action
Skills:
Lux Tenebris
Developmental Abilities:
Fortune - I*
—
Her breath caught in her throat, the air in the room suddenly feeling too thin to support the weight of what she was seeing.
Strength, Dexterity, and Agility hadn't just ticked upward; they had surged past the middle of the three-thousand range, a testament to the quality of the monsters on the lower floors. Endurance neared four thousand, the literal ink on the page vibrating with the pressure of the blows he had absorbed.
But Magic—Magic was a violation.
EX 4683!
It wasn't a stat anymore; it was an atmospheric event. She looked down at him, her silver eyes trembling with a mixture of possessiveness and profound awe. The Falna's notation was precise, unambiguous, and completely incapable of flattery. These numbers simply stated an irreducible truth with the calm indifference of a system that had run out of adequate language and proceeded anyway.
She stared at the figure for a long moment, and then—almost without meaning to—she began to think past the number itself, looking instead at the biology required to support it.
She had watched High Elves, the world's most gifted casters, spend lifetimes painstakingly expanding their Mind reserves. But watching Max casually sustain layers of complex magic across a day dive confirmed what she had suspected since his last update. His lineage was inherently, overwhelmingly magical in nature. A species conceptually superior even to the High Elves. It was the only logical explanation for his bottomless Mind reserves, the terrifying ease with which he conjured untested spells, and the sheer versatility of his demonic power.
Magic had been his most explosive parameter during his previous update, nearing the four-thousand mark. Now, it had utterly shattered it.
But the same question that had haunted her then returned now, heavier than before. Where are all these stats actually going?
Unlike his last dive, he had not pushed past his depth limit to Floor 29. He had deliberately restricted his descent, anchoring at the Safe Point on Floor 28—one floor shy of the seven-floor interval she knew triggered Lux Tenebris. Through the Falna's replay, she hadn't observed any violent, spine-arching activation of the skill. Unless the shift had been so minor that it hadn't even registered to his conscious mind, the skill hadn't forcibly expanded his container this time.
So what was driving this massive, disproportionate surge? Was this absurd stat growth simply a passive compensation generated by the skill, as she had previously theorized? Or was something much larger occurring? Was the Excelia being stockpiled to fuel something unseen within his alien physiology?
She did not have a clean answer.
But I will find out, she promised herself, a thrill of genuine anticipation tracing her spine. She was not certain the world had ever produced a mystery quite like him.
Her gaze drifted down to the final notation.
Fortune - I*
The asterisk sat beside it with quiet, categorical confidence. Fortune favors the bold. The bolder the host, the more fortunate they become. It was an ability calibrated not to effort or kills, but to the specific, measured willingness to enter impossible situations with full knowledge of what they were.
The deduction was simple. Who in Orario had been bolder? He had negotiated with the Ancient God just after his first level up, teleported into a Monster Rex's maw just to test a theory and proposed an empire in the dirt of the Middle Floors. The Falna had looked at the pattern of his audacity and decided Fortune was the only correct name for it.
Freya allowed herself a slow, deeply satisfied exhale. She reached for a fresh sheet of parchment, transcribed the Status in full by hand, and lowered the copy into Max's waiting grasp.
He took it and his eyes moved rapidly across the page, tracking the impossible numbers with the focused intensity of someone cross-referencing results against a very private hypothesis. Freya watched him, waiting.
Max's thumb traced over the ink. A slow, deeply satisfied smirk edged onto his face as the math aligned in his head.
"So continuous, mana depletion pushes my reserves to scale exponentially," he murmured and looked up, his expression humming with satisfaction. "Good to know. The mana spent was completely worth it."
Freya watched his mind work with highly amused fondness. If he hadn't been satisfied with those numbers, she mused silently, I am entirely certain the Falna system would have been forced to invent an entirely new letter grade just to appease his refusal to settle.
"At this rate," Freya continued, allowing a thread of warm, teasing amusement to cut through the quiet of the sanctum, "I am beginning to wonder if you intend to introduce the Falna to an entirely new notation system before you finish with it. Something above EX, presumably. Something the system has not needed to invent in the last thousand years of adventuring history."
That drew a short, genuine laugh from him. "I'll do my best to give the Guild's record-keepers a headache."
Freya's expression shifted — still warm, but now carrying the heavy, magnetic quality of a Goddess delivering absolute honesty dressed lightly as a joke. "If you do," she murmured, her gaze holding his steadily, "I cannot promise I will be able to control myself. Or, for that matter, any other woman in Orario."
Max looked at her for a moment, the analytical mind fading completely into the confident, dangerous Devil. He gave her a slow, deliberate wink.
Freya felt the smile reach her eyes before she could decide whether to let it. Insufferable, she thought, a wave of overwhelming fondness washing over her.
She set the original parchment aside, and the atmosphere in the room shifted. The playful warmth receded, settling into something quieter, heavier, and far more purposeful. The time for observation and theory was over; the ritual remained.
"Are you ready for the level up?" she asked, her tone dropping into a melodic, ceremonial cadence.
Max looked at the copied sheet one last time, then set it aside. "I am," he said. "Please do it."
She leaned forward, placing both hands flat against his bare back. Her palms settled warm over the divine script.
If she had possessed even the smallest warning of what this level-up meant for her, she would have prepared far better. She would have assembled the rest of her Executives in the audience to witness—or contain—what was about to follow.
But she didn't know.
And so, she innocently pressed her Arcanum into the seal to formalize the boost.
The moment her divinity flared, an immediate, visceral spike of dread seized her. A sharp, primal warning of absolute danger screamed through her divine instincts.
Confused, Freya instinctively pulled her hands back and moved to the side.
A low hum—a silent echo that made her ears ring painfully—vibrated through the air of the sanctum.
Then, the Destruction flared.
It did not bloom; it erupted, entirely unchecked and completely out of his control. A bubbling, violent aura of pure crimson-black energy poured from him. Its first target was the surface directly beneath him.
Freya watched as the luxurious bed began to literally lose itself into space. The silk, the premium mattress, the heavy carved oak—it didn't splinter or burn. It was slowly, terrifyingly erased into absolute nothingness.
That silent erasure was immediately followed by a violently expansive magical wave. The concussive force slammed into the room, shattering the marble tiles beneath her feet and cracking the enchanted glass of the windows in a jagged spiderweb of ruin.
But the cataclysm didn't stop there. A third force—a sheer, suffocating wall of pure physical pressure—exploded outward from his evolving body. It hit the room like a localized hurricane, slamming into the heavy mahogany doors at the entrance with a resounding BANG that made the reinforced wood bow and shudder violently on its hinges.
Absolute terror—an emotion entirely foreign and fiercely unwelcome to the Goddess of Beauty—gripped her heart. The magic was swirling, hungry and chaotic, and she suspected with chilling certainty that it would target her next.
Before that fear could be validated, the silver necklace at her throat flared with blinding intensity.
A transparent, geometric shield materialized around her, intercepting the heavy, oppressive wave of magic. But the pressure was too immense. The transparent barrier immediately began to shriek and crack. Reacting to the escalating threat, a second shield—this one shimmering with a deep crimson tint—snapped into existence inside the first.
Even behind the dual barriers, she was unsure if it would hold. Max's magic was completely out of control, and she was experiencing the terrifying reality of what such potent erasure could do firsthand as the second shield began to groan and dent inward.
Ki!
A sharp, determined cry cut through the roaring hum of magic.
Kairu, appearing out of nowhere, launched himself across the room. The slime recognized the signs instantly. Bounding over the fractured floor, Kairu threw himself at Freya, his gelatinous body expanding exponentially to encase her entirely within an organic, blue barrier of his own nature.
The destructive magic tried to push, tried to break the slime much like it had the shields, but Freya saw with profound relief that Kairu didn't budge. The familiar's immense magical resistance and adaptable physiology absorbed the shockwaves.
Not stopping there, Kairu extended thick, blue pseudopods outward, wrapping them around his floating, unconscious master in an attempt to smother the leaking aura. Freya watched in awe and horror as the edges of Kairu's mass began to hiss and dissolve, getting erased or cut off by the volatile Destruction, yet the slime stubbornly refused to let go.
After what felt like an eternity, the violent outburst finally reached its peak and began to subside.
The catastrophic maelstrom thinned and pulled back inward. Kairu, smoking and exhausted, retracted his damaged pseudopods from Max, leaving behind a completely devastated room, cracked windows, a cratered floor, and a Goddess wrapped in blue slime.
Just then—
"Goddess!"
A familiar, booming voice roared from the entrance.
Ottar tore the heavy mahogany doors entirely off their ruined hinges. The Warlord surged into the room, his greatsword drawn, his eyes blazing with unprecedented, murderous panic. Seeing his Goddess huddled amidst the devastation, he instantly locked onto the source of the threat: the unconscious boy drifting in the center of the room.
Ottar lunged. He hit a lingering wall of atmospheric pressure, the residual density of the demonic magic trying to push him back. But driven by sheer, unadulterated devotion, the Level 6 Warlord simply forced his way through it.
He closed the distance in a blur. One massive hand clamped around Max's throat like a vice of solid iron, lifting the boy effortlessly into the air, while his other hand brought the gleaming edge of his greatsword dangerously close to Max's neck in a lethal, trembling warning.
But before Freya could even cry out to stop him, Ottar hissed sharply.
The crimson-black energy hadn't completely receded into Max's core. Reacting autonomously to the hostile grip, the residual Power of Destruction ground violently against Ottar's hand like a supernatural abrasive. The Warlord's unyielding arm began to shake as the toxic, erasing magic actively ate through the dense, unnatural armor of his high-level skin.
Forced to relent against the burning decay, Ottar violently pulled his hand back, taking several heavy, staggering steps away. He stared down at his palm, which was blistered, raw, and seared an angry red.
"Ottar, stand down!" Freya commanded, stepping out from Kairu's protective embrace.
She didn't want the Boaz hurt any further, nor did she want him attacking Max in retaliation. She was still unsure of what the hell was actually happening, and she needed a moment to assert control.
Slowly, the last of the oppressive magic dissipated entirely. Max's body drifted downward, his boots settling gently onto the cracked marble floor.
Freya stood in the wreckage of her sanctum, flanked by a bewildered Warlord nursing a burned hand and a smoking, exhausted slime.
Max groaned, his eyelids fluttering open. He swayed slightly, blinking up at the shattered ceiling, then looking around at the cratered floor, the missing bed, and the two heavily armed, highly tense individuals staring at him.
The pure, unfiltered bewilderment radiating from the boy's face was instantaneous. As he took in his surroundings, Freya's tension finally broke. She understood immediately: he was just as confused—if not more confused—than she was. This had not been a deliberate attack.
As Max's posture shifted in his confusion, he turned slightly, exposing his back to her.
Freya's eyes widened, landing squarely on the skin between his shoulder blades. The divine script was glowing with a blinding, incandescent intensity. It wasn't just updating; it was rewriting itself in real-time, locking in the monumental changes that had just violently reconstructed his vessel.
As the glow finally began to settle into crisp, dark ink, Freya stepped forward to read the impossibility written on his skin.
-◈ -
Max
He took the copied parchment from Freya, his eyes immediately dropping to the numbers.
He had been perfectly satisfied. Actually, satisfied was an understatement; he was ecstatic. His Magic stat cresting four thousand, six hundred was a direct, undeniable testament to the sheer, unadulterated grinding he had subjected himself to. Creating the Trinitas rings, maintaining his Gojo projection, throwing out high-tier Kidō like candy—it had all paid off massively.
He scanned the rest of the block, immediately analyzing the build.
Strength is holding steady. Using those knuckle dusters against the Mad Beetles and integrating close-quarters combat with Hogni's training really worked, Max mused, a smirk touching his lips. Though it looks like the gap between Dexterity and Agility is still there. Not a huge difference, but I'd like them to grow hand in hand. Maybe I need to focus more on evasion drills.
He frowned slightly at the second line. Endurance neared four thousand.
That was a surprise. He hadn't taken that many direct hits, certainly not enough to outpace his Agility. Why the spike? he wondered. Was it the sparring with Hogni? Or maybe... pushing through the Middle and Lower Floors without Abnormal Resistance? My body had to constantly fight off the ambient dungeon toxicity. Yeah, that makes sense. Passive resistance training.
Whatever the reason, it didn't matter. The results were flawless. He was more than ready to Level Up.
He shared as much with Freya, his voice brimming with confident anticipation. He could feel she was just as pleased with his growth, though he caught a soft, melodic chuckle escaping her lips as she read through his Falna.
What's so funny? Max wondered, turning to lie down on the plush mattress. Was it the waterfall? It had to be the waterfall. Treating a Catastrophe-class hazard like a water slide would make anyone crack up. He grinned into the pillows. If only Hogni could appreciate the humor in it.
"Are you ready?" Freya asked, her voice dropping into a ceremonial cadence.
"I am," Max replied. "Please, do it."
He felt the mattress dip as she leaned forward, her palms settling warm over his back. And then, the single drop of divine ichor hit his skin.
The reaction was instantaneous, but it wasn't the familiar, unlocking warmth he had expected. A sudden, violent spike in his magic flared through his veins, bringing with it a horrifying sense of déjà vu. It felt exactly like his first time in the dungeon, when the labyrinth had tried to violently integrate him into its system.
It wasn't a container expanding. It was his biology forcibly tearing itself apart.
Wait— Max's eyes widened in alarm. He needed to warn Freya. Get back—
The thought died in its infancy. Before his mouth could even open, an overwhelming wave of magic and sheer, blinding pain detonated in him. His consciousness was simply snuffed out, knocked offline as his demonic physiology seized control to process the catastrophic evolution.
-◈ -
When he finally surfaced from the dark, he felt... different.
His head spun dizzily, but beneath the disorientation, his senses were dialed to a terrifying, razor-thin degree. He could hear the microscopic settling of dust, the frantic, heavy rhythm of hearts, the chaotic swirl of ambient mana in the air.
He blinked, trying to clear his vision. The plush silk pillows were gone. The mattress was gone.
Am I... floating?
He looked down, realizing his boots were hovering a foot above the ground. His wings had emerged involuntarily, beating with slow, silent strokes to keep him aloft. A quick internal scan confirmed two things: one, the Level Up was a success. Two, his control over his own magic was currently completely out of whack.
He looked around the room and his jaw dropped. The beautiful marble tiles were shattered into craters. The enchanted windows were cracked.
Where is she?! Panic spiked, cutting through the disorientation. He scanned the wreckage frantically, hoping to whatever gods were listening that she was safe.
He found her a moment later, suspended slightly off the ground near the far wall. She was completely encased in a massive, protective dome of familiar blue jelly. Kairu was giving off a series of rapid, distressed Ki! Ki! Ki! sounds, his pseudopods wiggling wildly in all directions as he maintained the organic barrier around the Goddess.
Okay. She's safe. Kairu's got her, Max breathed a sigh of relief.
Before he could orient himself further, a massive, calloused hand clamped around his throat like a vice of solid iron.
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Ottar's booming voice reverberated through the ruined chamber, thick with a blood-chilling fury. The Warlord had apparently torn through the doors and was now hoisting Max into the air by his neck, his eyes blazing with the promise of absolute, imminent violence.
Max blinked, still half-submerged in the fog of the evolution, trying to process what he was looking at.
A fortnight ago, this exact level of killing intent from the Level 6 juggernaut would have paralyzed him with primal terror.
Now? He felt... nothing. Not courage. Not defiance. His newly evolved instincts simply didn't register it as something worth fearing. The disconnect was strange — almost clinical.
He didn't even have time to decide what to do about the grip.
Ottar hissed sharply. From somewhere behind him, Freya's voice cut through the wreckage — sharp, commanding, absolute.
"Ottar, stand down!"
Whether it was the command or the magic, or both at once, the grip released. Ottar wrenched his arm back and stepped away. Max dropped, his wings catching him before his boots hit the cracked marble.
He steadied himself. Ottar was staring at his own palm — blistered, raw, burned red — and then back up at Max with an expression that wasn't quite just fury anymore.
Max looked down at his own hands. A faint residue of burgundy-black energy crackled across his knuckles, fading as he watched.
Oh. He hadn't done that consciously. He hadn't done anything at all.
"Max!"
Freya's voice jolted him. The blue dome dissolved as Kairu retracted, leaving the Goddess standing safely amidst the rubble. She wasn't looking at Ottar's burned hand or her ruined room. She was pointing a trembling finger directly at Max's exposed back.
Kairu, knowing exactly what to do, didn't wait for an order. The slime bounded over the rubble, pulled a blank sheet of parchment from his internal storage, leaped up to press it against Max's glowing back, and peeled it off with a soft schlick.
Landing lightly on his master's shoulder, Kairu proudly deposited the freshly printed Status sheet into Max's hands.
There, shining with a residual glow of its own, was the change that had caused all this chaos. Max tuned out the ruined room, the stunned Warlord, and the watchful Goddess, and got completely lost in his Status.
—
Status:
Maximus Stilbon
Freya Familia
Devil [Pure-Blood] (Mid Class)
Level 3
Stats:
Strength: I0
Endurance: I0
Dexterity: I0
Agility: I0
Magic: I0
Lineage Powers:
• Devil: Superhuman physiology with enhanced physical parameters, accelerated healing, adaptive resilience, flight via natural wings, and the ability to shape and manipulate demonic power for various supernatural applications.
Integrated Abilities:
Abnormal Resistance
Strong Body
Healing Power
Spirit Healing
• Destruction: Manifests a catastrophic power that erases matter. Shape and intensity are dependent on the user's will. Scales with Mind
?
Magic:
Ars Magna
The user's personal grimoire made manifest. A system of magic that allows the user to shape their demonic power into various magical phenomena based purely on their will and imagination. This magic is not bound by the conventional slot system. No chant.
Independent Action
Magic activates automatically when predetermined conditions are met. Complexity and quantity scale with Level. Available Actions: 2 Simple, 1 Complex.
Skills:
Lux Tenebris
Established resonance with the Dungeon enables accelerated growth through combat and exploration. Facing superior opponents further enhances growth, pushing natural limits.
Developmental Abilities:
Fortune - F
Devil - G
Darkness is your birthright
Integrated Abilities**:
Hunter — Improves abilities against monsters that the user has fought before and gained excelia from.
Night Fight — Enhanced parameters in darkness.
Mage — Improved Magic stat efficiency and output.
**All sub-abilities rank up simultaneously with the parent ability.
—
Max stared at the sheet, his breath catching sharply in his throat.
Devil (Mid Class).
That was the first thing that grabbed him by the throat. It wasn't just a Level Up in the Falna system. The massive influx of high-quality Excelia must have acted as a biological catalyst. He hadn't just leveled up as an adventurer; his actual, physical race had evolved. He had broken through the ceiling of a Low-Class Devil and officially ascended to Mid-Class.
But while the Class change was staggering, what followed it was nothing to scoff at.
His eyes darted down to Fortune. It had jumped straight from I to F in a single update. A massive surprise at first glance, but as he analyzed the potential reasons for it, the math checked out. He had come out on top negotiating with two Gods—Ouranos and Hermes. He had challenged a Goliath solo and won, not to mention the myriad other chaotic stunts he'd pulled—pranking the Astraea Familia when they wanted to fight the boss, or sending Kairu down the Category 4 waterfall. He had done a lot of wildly improbable things, and he was more than happy for the system's recognition.
But it was the final section that made his brain short-circuit.
Devil - G? Another Devil?
He blinked, re-reading the parchment. He already had a 'Devil' tag up in his Lineage Powers. Why did it appear again down in the Developmental Abilities at G?
He studied the sub-text, his analytical mind quickly piecing the puzzle together. Ah. I see.
The abilities listed under his Lineage Power—Abnormal Resistance, Strong Body, Healing Power, Spirit Healing—were passive, biological traits. The innate hardware of a Devil's body. But the abilities listed under the new Developmental node—Hunter, Night Fight, Mage—were enhancements. Combat modifiers that required actual experience and action to develop.
Is it like Ryuu's Astraea Record? Max mused. Her magic had bundled multiple spells into one slot. The Falna had done the same thing here, but for Developmental Abilities.
It was too complicated to fully unpack right now, but he had a working theory. Normally, most adventurers chose one Developmental Ability upon leveling up. But Max's biological jump to Mid-Class had apparently bypassed the selection screen entirely, forcing the system to generate a bespoke ability to house his new, racially-bound combat enhancements.
If my theory is correct, Max thought, a giddy thrill running through him, my Lineage powers will naturally evolve whenever my Class goes up, while this 'Devil' Developmental Ability will rank up with my Level.
He did the math. Four innate biological traits. Three bundled combat enhancements. One standalone luck modifier.
I essentially have eight Developmental Abilities at Level 3, Max realized, his grin widening. And 'Mage'? The Mage ability alone was supposed to give an adventurer an entire Level's worth of extra magical output and efficiency. He would have passed it if he had to choose it alone. But as a sub-ability bundled into a racial trait?
He'd gladly take it.
If the previous status sheet revealing his 4,600 Magic stat had been an ego booster, this one pushed his ego firmly into the realm of absolute, unadulterated arrogance that could be mistaken for Pride.
He lowered the parchment, pulling himself out of the glorious, game-breaking numbers and back into the ruined reality of the room. He looked up at Freya, who was watching him from the rubble with a gaze that burned hotter than the morning sun. Then he looked at Ottar, who stood in stoic silence, quietly flexing his burned, raw hand.
Mid-Class, Max thought, a slow, predatory grin spreading across his face as the sheer magnitude of his new reality settled deep into his bones.
He couldn't help it. The power was intoxicating. The sheer, overwhelming energy thrummed just beneath his skin, vibrating through his very marrow, demanding to be tested. The caution and pragmatism that usually governed his actions were swept away in the tidal wave of his biological ascension.
"Lady Freya," Max said. His voice carried a dark, resonant confidence that hadn't been there ten minutes ago. He took a step forward, the crunch of broken marble under his boots echoing in the quiet room. "I know you have a lot of questions. Honestly, so do I. But right now..."
He flexed his hands, watching the faint, residual crimson-black energy crackle across his knuckles.
"...this power is too intoxicating for me to think straight. If you are willing, I would like to burn off this excess energy with a spar against Ottar. And once that is done," he locked his gaze onto hers, a dangerous promise in his amethyst eyes, "we can get back to unraveling the mystery of this Level Up."
Freya stared at him, momentarily taken aback by the raw battle lust and unshakeable confidence radiating from him. During their first meeting, he had been a rookie demanding a test. Now, he was a predator demanding a release. After a moment of heavy, silent consideration, a slow, brilliant smile spread across her face.
This was the fire she had been waiting to see.
She gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. "Granted."
"Perfect."
Max didn't wait for them to gather. The crimson light of his demonic power flared instantly, engulfing all of them—Goddess, Warlord, Slime, and Devil—where they stood.
VWOOM.
The ruined sanctum vanished, leaving only silence in its wake as Max teleported them directly to the vast, flowery expanse of Floor 28.
--> Devil in a Dungeon <--
AN:
OOF! That's definitely going to be one of the dangerous updates Freya had ever done, lol.
Finally another Level up and Max has officially stepped into the Mid-Class range. I initially planned another scene of Ottar, but felt Max's pov gives it a nice natural end and scrapped it. Though who thought Max will be fighting Ottar before Hedin could even reach the surface, heh.
Also, since I don't want to bombard you or strain myself with back to back Action scenes, the next chapter will be from Freya's pov and honestly the fight would be last of her concerns at this point, haha. And there are a few mysteries that will be revealed as well...
As always, do share your thoughts on the story in a review/comment.
If you'd like to read 8 chapters ahead(around 40k words), support my work, or commission a story idea, visit my p.a.t.r.e.o.n.c.o.m/b3smash
Please note that the chapters are early access only, they will be eventually released here as well.
I will be travelling on Friday going back to work and will change time zones and need a week to get back into the rhythm.
Do you want a late update this week on Saturday/Sunday and for me to take break in the 2nd week of June so the next update after that will be on 16th or would you be fine for the next update to be on 12th June?
I want you to decide when you want the next update by commenting.
Ben, Out.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.